Hanley - Engendering The State: Family Formation and State Building in Early Modern France

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Engendering the State: Family Formation and State Building in Early Modern France
Author(s): Sarah Hanley
Source: French Historical Studies, Vol. 16, No. 1 (Spring, 1989), pp. 4-27
Published by: Duke University Press
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Engendering the State:
Family Formation and State Building
in Early Modern France
Sarah Hanley
In the secret backshop of the mind recommended by Montaigne, histo-

rians muse on occasion about exchanging the archival habitat for an
ethnographic one. Straightaway the vision signifies different modes of
inquiry: the mundane and the exotic, the traditional and the contem-
porary, the scholarly life focused on documents of deceased persons
and the one shared with living members of communities. In truth,
however, the historian-cum-ethnographer vision springs not from ex-
otica, but from the epistemological dilemma that haunts historical re-
search circumscribed by past time, unchartable space, and selective
documents. At times the research format itself may confound historical
investigation. There are dangers posed by research systems that sub-
scribe to the replication of uniformity-the compilation of essentially
confirming facts. But rewards may be reaped from systems that strug-
gle with the organization of diversity-the investigation of amorphous
layers of contradictory evidence. There are empty silences left in re-
search formats that accept the finality of textual opaqueness. But si-
lences may be mitigated by formats that attempt to read encoded phe-
nomena, such as gendered rhetoric and relations, patterns of symbol
and ritual, notions of honor and shame. Historians have always writ-
ten about the power of rights; now we write about the rites of power.
Sarah Hanley is professor of history and associate dean for faculty at The University of Iowa,
Iowa City. She is the author of The Lit de Justice of the Kings of France: Constitutional Ideology
in Legend, Ritual, and Discourse (Princeton, 1983) and other studies of political culture.
The author benefited from the critical comments of the following colleagues at the Institute
for Advanced Study when the first version of this article (part of a forthcoming book) was pre-
sented there: Franco Ferraresi, Anna Elisabetta Galleoti, Carlo Ginzburg, Albert Hirschman,
Phyllis Mack, Malcolm J. Rohrbough, Joan Wallach Scott, Carl Schorske, Carmen J. Sirianni,
Lawrence Stone, and Joan E. Vincent; and from discussions with Marilyn Hanley, Mianne Han-
ley, Michele Fogel and Shirley Jaffe.
French Historical Studies, Vol. 16, No. 1 (Spring 1989)

ENGENDERING THE STATE 5
We always knew that a rose by any other name would smell as sweet;
now we ponder the puzzle of The Name of the Rose. ' It is at the mar-
gins of historical discourse, where the interpenetration of different
domains and voices is not readily apparent, that anthropological in-
sights may prove useful. Despite differences of opinion regarding the
use of interdisciplinary concepts to understand historical phenom-
ena,2 the general challenge to revamp insular modes of apprehension
resonates in the field of history.
As in earlier work, this historical study of political culture in early
modern France negates the dichotomy between structure and event and
poses the historical process as a renewable dialogue or cultural conver-
sation, wherein history is culturally ordered by existing concepts, or
schemes of meaning, at play in given times and places; and culture is
historically ordered when schemes of meaning are revalued and revised
as persons act and reenact them over time.3 One might regard this pro-
1 Interpretive nuances are discussed in Clifford Geertz, Local Knowledge: Further Essays in
Interpretive Anthropology (New York, 1983). Varied "readings" of historical evidence inform the
exchange between Roger Chartier, "Texts, Symbols, and Frenchness," Robert Darnton, "The
Symbolic Element in History," and the comments of James Fernandez valuing diversity over
replication, "Historians Tell Tales: Of Cartesian Cats and Gallic Cockfights," all published in
The Journal of Modern History 57 (December 1985): 683-95; ibid., 58 (March, 1986):218-34; and
ibid., 60 (March, 1988): 113-27. The analytical power of the concept of gender is demonstrated by
Joan Wallach Scott, "Gender: A Useful Category of Historical Analysis," The American Histori-
cal Review 91 (December 1986): 1053-75; and applied in an exemplary manner to early modern
France by Natalie Zemon Davis, The Return of Martin Guerre (Cambridge, Mass., 1983); and
Fiction in the Archives: Pardon Tales and their Tellers in Sixteenth-Century France (Stanford,
1987). On ritual and discourse, consult Sarah Hanley, The Lit de Justice of the Kings of France:
Constitutional Ideology in Legend, Ritual, and Discourse (Princeton, 1983; Paris, 1989); and
Sean Wilentz, ed., Rites of Power: Symbolism, Ritual, and Politics since the Middle Ages (Phila-
delphia, 1985). The rose in its semiotic pose recalls Umberto Ecco's novel of the name.
2 Historians who eschew research with a social focus or research informed by anthropologi-
cal expertise argue for the overriding importance of politics and/or class conflict, or take a more
positivist approach to evidence and its interpretation: see Eugene Genovese and Elizabeth Fox-
Genovese, "The Political Crisis of Social History: A Marxian Perspective," The Journal of Social
History 10 (Winter 1976): 205-20; the graceless caveats of Tony Judt, "A Clown in Royal Purple:
Social History and the Historians," History Workshop 7 (Spring 1979): 66-94; and the limited
foci of Gertrude Himmelfarb, The New Old History (Cambridge, Mass., 1988), and Robert Fin-
lay, "The Refashioning of Martin Guerre," The American Historical Review 93 (June 1988):
553-7 1. Some of the correctives for this narrow focus include Carolyn C. Lougee, Le Paradis des
Femmes: Women, Salons, and Social Stratification in Seventeenth-Century France (Princeton,
1976); Bonnie G. Smith, Ladies of the Leisure. Class: The Bourgeoises of Northern France in the
Nineteenth Century (Princeton, 1981);and Natalie Zemon Davis, "On the Lame," The American
Historical Review 93 (June 1988): 572-603.
3 These contraries are interwoven in Hanley, The Lit de Justice; Marshall Sahlins, Islands of
History (Chicago, 1985), who combines the theoretical overview with a case history; and Pierre
Bourdieu, Outline of a Theory of Practice (Cambridge, 1977). Works that treat culture as a dialog-
ical process or cultural conversation and investigate its appropriation include Mikhail Bakhtin,
Rabelais and His World (Cambridge, Mass., 1965);Carlo Ginzburg, The Cheese and the Worms:
The Cosmos of a Sixteenth-Century Miller (Baltimore, 1980);David Warren Sabean, Power in the
Blood: Popular Culture and Village Discourse in Early Modern Germany (Cambridge, 1984);
Gerald M. Sider, Culture and Class in Anthropology and History (Cambridge, 1986); Robert M.

6 FRENCH HISTORICAL STUDIES
cess of reordering as one that "counterfeits culture"; that is, as a process

that replicates a perceived original but at the same time (consciously or
unconsciously) forges something quite new.
The first part of the present study identifies the "Family-State
compact" forged during the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries
between French legists (officeholders in the Parlement of Paris and
cohorts), whose social survival and political place depended on profes-
sional reputation and judicious family formation; and the kings (and
royal councillors), whose developing political sights focused on state
building. The second part investigates the ways that the human agents,
particularly women in this study, whose cultural purview contained
the Family-State compact, counterfeited culture over time to fashion
themselves and their spheres of action. The third part discusses how
interaction between the Family-State compact and the human agents
within its purview provoked discourse on social entitlement and how
the compact, which purveyed a family model of socioeconomic author-
ity based on gender distinctions, influenced the state model of political
authority in the making. Here the interpenetration of different do-
mains-private and public, social and political, female and male,
lower orders and upper orders-reveals much about cultural appro-
priation and about family formation and its relation to state building.
The Family-State Compact

In early modern Europe the success of monarchic state building, or
political centralization, depended in part on the emergence of a profes-
sional administrative elite capable of staffing national institutions.
One of the critical needs in France, staffing the Parlements, was met by
the bourgeois and newly enobled gentlemen who studied law in the
famous universities and participated in the French system of venality.4
Isherwood, Farce and Fantasy: Popular Entertainment in Eighteenth-Century Paris (New York,
1986); and Roger Chartier, The Cultural Uses of Print in Early Modern France (Princeton, 1987).
4On the conditions for successful early state building, see Charles Tilly, "Reflections on the
History of European State-Making," in The Formation of National States in WesternEurope, ed.
Charles Tilly (Princeton, 1975), 25-46. The importance of social relationships and networks is
discussed in Tilly, "Retrieving European Lives," in Reliving the Past: The Worlds of Social
History, ed. Olivier Zunz (Chapel Hill, 1985): 11-52; and investigated by Sharon Kettering, Pa-
trons, Brokers, and Clients in Seventeenth-Century France (New York, 1986). Studies of bourgeois
and noble legists holding offices in the Parlements include Lenard Berlanstein, The Barristers of
Toulouse (Baltimore, 1975); George Huppert, Les Bourgeois Gentilshommes: An Essay on the
Definition of Elites in Renaissance France (Chicago, 1977); Sharon Kettering, Judicial Politics
and Urban Revolt in Seventeenth-Century France: The Parlement of Aix, 1629-1659 (Princeton,
1978); and Jonathan Dewald, The Formation of a Provincial Nobility: The Magistrates of the
Parlement of Rouen, 1499-1610 (Princeton, 1980); and the importance of female hypergamy in
creating the officeholding elite is stressed by Lougee, Le Paradis des Femmes. Some good exam-

These professional legists purchased judicial offices with family

funds, inherited offices from family predecessors, and received offices
(in usufruct) from spouses through female dowries of allied families.
From the outset the officeholders (male) and office owners (male and
female) strategically retained these prestigious charges within family
networks, because offices (hereditary property by 1604) made good in-
vestments in this proto-capitalistic economy, opened other patronage
doors, and conferred noble status over several generations.5 This pecu-
liar French conflation of private and public power, or family-state
governance, served mutual interests. The king and royal government
through the sale of offices obtained the financial capital and profes-
sional service necessary to support a centralized polity and facilitate
state building; and the legists (bourgeois or newly ennobled) through
the purchase, exercise, and bequests of offices obtained the preroga-
tives necessary to construct critical family networks and augment fam-
ily fortunes. Once the legists invested family resources in government,
they moved on two other fronts to remold a society that would support
them.
On the first front, the legists remolded the social body by promot-
ing the superiority of French judicial expertise and civil court actions
over the challenges of rivals, such as ecclesiastical courts, royal coun-
cils, and individuals bent on private vengeance.6 As the institutional
architects of the Parlement of Paris, the legists sought national status
ples of family networks appear in Robert J. Kalas, "The Selve Family of Limousin: Members of a
New Elite in Early Modern France," The Sixteenth Century Journal 18 (Summer 1987): 147-72;
Barbara Diefendorf, Paris City Councillors in the Sixteenth Century: The Politics of Patrimony
(Princeton, 1983); and Roger Mettam, Power and Faction in Louis XIV's France (New York,
1989), whose work shows that family groups served at all administrative levels of government.
5 Offices were first held in survivance, became hereditary property by the droit annuel of
1604, and were finally treated as propres (lineage property) in family succession. Roland Mous-
nier, Les Institutions de la France sous la monarchie absolue (Paris, 1980), 2:319-65, argues that
the system of venality stimulated social cohesion; and Ralph E. Giesey, "Rules of Inheritance and
Strategies of Mobility in Prerevolutionary France," The American Historical Review 82 (April
1977): 271-89, shows how offices came to be treated legally as propres, establishing a kind of
dynastic officialdom of officeholders. For a more critical view of the system of venality despite the
cohesion it fostered among families of parlementaires, see Albert N. Hamscher, The Parlement of
Paris after the Fronde, 1653-1673 (Pittsburgh, 1976); and Hanley, The Lit de Justice, chap. 12,
which points also to the ideological repercussions of hereditary officeholding. William Doyle,
"The Price of Offices in Pre-revolutionary France," Historical Journal 27 (1984): 831-60, finds
that the price of offices fluctuated with the market but generally rose with inflation; and Daniel
Dessert, Argent, pouvoir, et sociztt au grand siecle (Paris, 1984), concludes that members of the
officeholding elite, despite contemporary disavowals, were involved in proto-capitalism.
6 See Robert Genestral, Les Origines de l'appel comme d'abus (Paris, 1950); Hamscher, The
Conseil Prive and the Parlements in the Age of Louis XIV: A Study in French A bsolutism (Trans-
actions of the American Philosophical Society, 1987), Vol. 77; Francois Billacois, Le Duel dans la
soci&ttfranfaise des XVIeXVjIe siecles. Essai de psychosociologie historique (Paris, 1986).

as a supreme court for that body and arrested encroachments from

other courts and from emperors, popes, and other monarchs. As the
authors of individual reputations, the legists sought professional fame
through scholarly erudition and the practice of law. They vied for the
attention of the elite-kings and royal councils, scholars and intellec-
tuals-by publishing legal commentaries, political tracts, and histori-
cal works.7 More important here, they competed with colleagues for
public attention by publishing and peddling broadsheets, pamphlets,
and books that lauded their own legal prowess. The judicial arrets
celebrated their legal decisions; the plaidoiries celebrated their elo-
quence in courtroom pleadings; the factums, or memoires, written by
the litigants, or more often by legists or writers hired by them, re-
counted the litigants' conflicting views of cases.8 The collections of
judicial arrets, some aptly titled arrets celebres or arrets memorables,
are memorable, because they attest both to the legists' search for fame
and to their important role in the legislative process. In theory the king
promulgated edicts and ordinances, which the Parlement of Paris of fi-
cially registered; in practice the legists shaped and created law over
time by rendering judicial arrets, which set precedents for later deci-
sions and for future royal legislative addenda. The celebrated arretsare
also memorable, because they attest to the priorities regarding family
formation that the legists addressed.
On the second front, the legists remolded the social body by con-
structing and consolidating family networks, which required control
over family formation. To that end the officeholders in Parlements and
in other bureaus promulgated a "Family-State compact," which was
designed to bring family formation under parental (that is, patriar-
chal) control in the first instance and under the magisterial control of
the Parlement of Paris in the second. The Family-State compact regu-
lated family matters (marriage regulations, reproductive customs, in-
7 See Hanley, The Lit de Justice, and Donald R. Kelley, Foundations of Modern Historical
Scholarship: Language, Law, and History in the French Renaissance (New York, 1977), for the
legists' historical views of French prerogatives and institutions.
I Just a few examples include: [Arrets] Jean Papon, Recueil d'arrests notables . . . (Paris,
1565); Jean de Coras, Arrest Memorable du Parlement de Tolose . . . (Paris, 1579); Barnab6
Brisson, Arrest de la Cour de Parlement . . . (Paris, 1602); Barnabe Le Vest (pare), Ccxxxvii
arrets celebres et metmorables du Parlement de Paris . . . (Paris, 1612); Louis Servin, Quatre
livres des arrests et choses jugees par la cour . . . (Paris, 1627); George Lotiet, Nouveau et der-
nier recueil d'aucuns notables arrests . . . (Paris, 1633);Hyacinthe de Boniface, Arrests notables
de la cour de Parlement de Provence . . (Paris, 1670); Lucien Soefve, Nouveau recueil de plu-
sieurs questions notables jugees par arrests (Paris, 1682). [Plaidoiries] Jacques Cap-
pel, Plaidoyez de feu maistre Jacques Cappel . . . (Paris, 1561);Julien Peleus, LesPlaidoyers de
maistre Julien Peleus (Paris, 1614); Jacques Puymisson, Plaidoyez . . (Rouen, 1627);
[Factums and MWmoires]see 21-25nn. below.

heritance rules, and marital separation arrangements) and instituted

civil procedures to register vital statistics and legal procedures to ap-
peal contested cases to the Parlement of Paris.9
Marriage regulations. The Family-State compact reordered mar-
riage regulations through a marriage pact composed of innovative
French laws that superseded Canon laws and regulated alliances in
terms of family interests, not those of church or children.10 In an un-
precedented move the Parlement of Paris promulgated the edict of 1556
outlawing clandestine marriages; that is, marriages contracted secretly
by a consenting couple but without parental consent." Between 1556
and 1639 a series of edicts addressed the issues of parental consent and
public notice and introduced penalties for infractions. First, the mar-
riage pact changed the rules on parental consent. The edict of 1556
required parental (that is, patriarchal) consent for marriages con-
tracted by enfants de famille-"family children," or blood children,
who were legally subject as minors to family authority. The edict also
lengthened minority age from twenty to thirty years for males, from
seventeen to twenty-five years for females. The ordinance of 1579 re-
quired parental consent (or consent of closest relatives) in addition to
that of guardians (tuteurs, curateurs); and it required widows under
twenty-five years of age to obtain consent. The ordinance of 1629, con-
cerned "to maintain the authority of fathers over their children," de-
9 The "Family-State compact" is drawn from the following legislation: Francois-Andre

Isambert, et al., eds., Recueil general des anciennes lois franfaises depuis l'an 420 jusqu'a la
revolution de 1789 (Paris, 1821-1833): (1536, article 22) 12:508; (1539) 12:160, 573-89, 633-34;
(1556) 13:469-71, 471-73; (1560) 14:36-37: (1579, articles 40-44, 181-82) 14:391-92, 423-24;
(1580, article 25) 14:471-72; (1606, article 12) 15:307; (1629, articles 39-40, 145, 169) 16:234-35,
267, 273-74 (1639, articles 1-7) 16:520-24; (1666) 18:90-93; (1668) 18:137-38; (1680) 19:231-32,
253; (1681) 19:370; (1683) 19:413; (1691) 20:150; (1697) 20:287-91, 301-2; (1702) 20:408; (1708)
20:527-29; (1730) 21:338-41; (1739) 21:338-40.
10See Hanley, "Family and State in Early Modern France: The Marriage Pact," in Connect-
ing Spheres: Women in the Western World from 1550 to the Present, ed. Marilyn J. Boxer and
Jean H. Quataert (New York, 1987), chap. 1. For Gratian's Canon law rubrics on the consent of
the couple, see John T. Noonan, "Marriage in the Middle Ages: Power to Choose," Viator 4
(1973): 419-34; Charles Donahue, Jr., "The Canon Law on the Formation of Marriage and Social
Practice in the Later Middle Ages, "The Journal of Family History 8 (Summer 1983): 144-58;
Juliette M. Turlan, "Recherches sur le mariage dans la pratique coutumiere (XIIe-XVIe siecles),
Revue historique de droit franfais et &tranger35 (1957): 477-528; and Beatrice Gottlieb, "The
Meaning of Clandestine Marriage," in Family and Sexuality in French History, ed. Robert
Wheaton and Tamara K. Hareven (Philadelphia, 1980), 49-83.
11 This argument for the emergence of the Family-State compact places the edict of 1556 in a
wider social and cultural context and casts doubt on the repeated assertions of historians, follow-
ing Paul Ourliac and J. de Malafosse, Histoire du Droit Prive (Paris, 1968), 3:pt. 2, chap. 2, sec. 3,
that Henry II promulgated the edict of 1556 when the pope delayed in annulling the clandestine
marriage of Francois de Montmorency, to whom the king wished to marry his illegitimate daugh-
ter; see, for instance, Andre Burguiere, "The Formation of the Couple," The Journal of Family
History 12 (1987): 39-53; and James F. Traer, Marriage and Family in Eighteenth-Century France
(Ithaca, 1980), chap. 1.

manded exact observance of the ordinance of 1579 and ordered cases

tried in the ecclesiastical courts to conform to its provisions. The edict
of 1639 treated all family offspring as minors, whatever their age, sex,
or marital status.
Second, the marriage pact amended rules on public notice and
witness. The ordinance of 1579 forbade notaries to record marriage
promises given by paroles de present (an exchange of vows); as a result,
marriage rituals required the presence of a priest. The same ordinance
required priests to determine the social status of the parties and
whether or not they were members of a family, to provide public notice
of pending marriages by publishing three church banns, and to regis-
ter the presence of at least four competent witnesses to marriage acts.
The ordinance of 1629 forbade priests to marry persons from outside
the parish without permission from their own parish priests or dioce-
san bishop. It commanded all judges (ecclesiastical and civil) who
heard cases on marriage validity to exact from the parties written proof,
except in the cases of persons from the lowest orders (personnes de
vilWage,basse et vile condition) for whom the testimony of six witnesses
(the closest relatives of both parties) would suffice. The edict of 1639
required priests to obtain from the marriageable couple written proof
of parental consent, social status, and (parental) domicile.
Third, the marriage pact established penalties for noncompliance.
The edict of 1556 ruled that fractious children could be deprived of
financial assets (donations) already received and disinherited in the
future. The ordinance of 1579 reaffirmed the disinheritance penalty
and extended it to widows under twenty-five years of age. Then this
ordinance added an unprecedented clause that linked clandestine mar-
riage with the capital crime of rapt (by seduction or abduction) and
other extraordinary penalties (such as banishment).12 It applied the
penalties of disinheritance and rapt to minors who married clandes-
tinely, including those who obtained parental consent following the
act, and to all persons, including guardians, who counseled or aided
the parties. The edict of 1629 confirmed those penalties and added con-
fiscation of goods to the repertoire. The edict of 1639 disallowed chil-
dren born of clandestine marriages to inherit from the estates of all
relatives, direct and collateral. The edict of 1697 extended disinheri-
12 The problem of rapt has been treated by Jean-Franois Fournel, Traite de la seduction
(Paris, 1781); Leon Duguit, "Etude historique sur le rapt de seduction," Nouvelle revue histo-
rique de droitfranfais et &tranger10 (1886): 587-685; Mark Cummings, "Elopement, Family, and
the Courts: The Crime of Rapt in Early Modern France," Proceedings of the Fourth Annual
Meeting of the Western Society for French History (1976): 118-25; and Traer, Marriage and Fam-
ily, chap. 1.

tance to the legitime portion of an estate (formerly guaranteed), and it

specified penalties for nonconforming priests (deprivation of rev-
enues, banishment) and for witnesses who swore falsely (the galleys for
males, banishment for females). The edict of 1681 applied all these
laws to French subjects who resided in foreign lands. Legislation con-
tinued into the eighteenth century, but the main tenets of the marriage
pact were set in place between 1556 and 1639.
Reproductive rules. The Family-State compact regulated repro-
ductive customs. In 1556, the same year the edict against clandestine
marriage appeared, a companion edict addressed a "serious and detest-
able" female crime: clandestine pregnancy and childbirth. The edict
complained that women who conceived children by "dishonest
means" (out of wedlock) often disguised or hid pregnancies, delivered
newborns secretly, and sometimes suffocated and murdered them, dis-
posing of the bodies in hidden places. The edict forbade women to hide
pregnancies or to deliver babies secretly without witnesses. If they did
so and delivered a dead child (or said they delivered a dead child), they
could be charged with murder and punished as an example to others.
Following this extraordinary edict, pregnant women, single or wid-
owed, were required to make official statements of pregnancy (declara-
tion de la grossesse) at local civil registries and submit to interrogation.
Apparently the Catholic clergy was supposed to pronounce the prohi-
bition of clandestine pregnancy from the pulpit every three months,
but the Assembly of the Clergy balked at the forced mixing of secular
and sacred messages.13 When the edict of 1708 renewed clandestine
pregnancy prohibitions, it also addressed the dispute about church
pronouncements. The edict charged that women who "conceive
[children] in crime" tend to succumb to a sense of "false honor," which
allows them to depart from the normal dictates of nature and sacrifice
the welfare or lives of newborns. The edict suggested that knowledge of
the "rigor of the law" would deter such unnatural women and again
ordered the church to pronounce prohibitions against clandestine
pregnancy from the pulpit. As a further check on clandestine preg-
nancy, the edict of 1680 forbade Protestant women to practice as mid-
wives, insinuating that they might hide the births of illegitimate new-
borns.
13 According to the edict of 1708, the clergy cited royal declarations of 1695 and 1698 to the
effect that such announcements would not be made during the sermon but only preceding the
mass. Olwen H. Hufton, The Poor of Eighteenth-Century France, 1750-1789 (Oxford, 1974),
321-22, notes that in rural areas during the eighteenth century priests seemed to discharge these
reporting duties well. It is doubtful, however, that the system worked well during the seventeenth
century or in cities, certainly not in Paris.

On a different note, the government offered social rewards for

marriage and reproduction properly pursued. Connecting reproduc-
tion and statehood, the edict of 1666 noted that "marriages are the fe-
cund sources from which the strength and grandeur of states is de-
rived," and advocated that the French (like the Romans) should
recompense "fathers who gave children to the state." This edict de-
plored the number of men who were not married, yet held public of-
fices, and proposed civic rewards for marriage and reproduction. First,
taxable subjects who were legally married before twenty years of age
were offered exemption from tailles, impositions, and other public
taxes through the twenty-fifth year. Those who were legally married
and the "fathers of families" numbering ten living children or twelve
children, living or deceased, were offered similar tax exemptions. Sec-
ond, non-taxable subjects (that is "gentlemen," noble or newly en-
nobled) who were legally married and whose "propagation of gentle-
men" replenished the nobility, were offered royal pensions for
fathering ten living children or twelve children (living or deceased).
Legally married "bourgeois" were offered the same pensions plus ex-
emptions from city taxes.'4 Almost a generation later, however, the
edict of 1666 offering fatherhood rewards was revoked by that of 1683
due to the disappointing number of inflated claims put forth.
Inheritance restrictions. The Family-State compact received sup-
port from inheritance customs practiced since 1510 in the Paris region,
where the Coutume de Paris held. The Parisian rules of partible inher-
itance favored a community of goods, rather than the strict separation
of property practiced in other regions.15 Marriages were constructed
financially from blood lines; inheritance followed suit. The new cou-
ple constructed a household by incorporating investments allocated by
respective families. The husband brought an estate share and reserveda
dower portion for the future widow. The wife brought a dowry, and the
husband had the usufruct over the interest but could not dissipate the
principal. The community property was shared by husband and wife
14 For taxable subjects: those who married at twenty-one were exempt through the twenty-
fourth year, and the ten living children could include those who died bearing arms. Wives are not
mentioned. For gentlemen and bourgeois: the pensions were 1,000 livres per year for fathers of ten
(including those who died bearing arms) and 2,000 livres for twelve. Wives are mentioned only in
passing.
15 For a summary of inheritance customs, see Diefendorf, Paris City Councillors, chaps. 8 and
9; and Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie, who summarizes the work of Jean Yver, "Family Structures
and Inheritance Customs in Sixteenth-Century France," in Family and Inheritance: Rural So-
ciety in Western Europe, 1200-1800, ed. Jack Goody, et al., (Cambridge, 1976), chap. 2. On the
importance of propres from a contemporary view, see Philippe de Renusson, TraitMdes propres
(Paris, 1681).

as partners, but the lineage property (propres) remained linked to the

family of origin until the birth of children to whom it would later
descend. Should either spouse die without issue, the lineage portion of
the deceased person's property (usually a significant sum) ascended
back to the bloodline of origin.
To the Parisian customs already in place the Family-State com-
pact added further restrictions. The edict of 1539 specified that all gifts
(donations) of family property must be contracted before a notary and
registered in royal courts to be valid. The edict of 1560 prohibited wid-
owed females who remarried from making to a second husband (his
parents or children) any donations larger than the smallest portion
given to one of her children or grandchildren. The ordinance of 1579
reinforced that prohibition and extended it (belatedly) to males. In
tandem, however, it denounced another seemingly female folly, the
remarriage of widowed females with males of lower status (such as
valets). The edict of 1629 ruled that widows with children who married
men of lower status would forfeit their dower portion from the first
marriage. The edict of 1639 disinherited the descendants of those who
kept a clandestine marriage hidden for a lifetime and their accom-
plices. The edicts of 1639 and 1697 did not declare marriage in extremis
(marriage of the middle-aged or elderly) illegal, but they did specify
that children born before or after such unions and their descendants
could not inherit.
Marital separation arrangements. The Family-State compact left
the disposition of cases for marital separation in the hands of the
judges. In this area, where surprisingly little legislation was promul-
gated,16the legists truly created law, case by case. Unwilling to indict
men for adultery, the legists did not seek legislation against it, and
judges set forth the following practice in lieu of the law. In cases of
voluntary marital separation (of bed, not board), the corporate family
assets usually remained in tact. The husband disbursed the combined
resources, and the wife's access to them (through his permission) was
severely limited. In cases of marital separation for cause (bed and
board), the situation was more difficult. On the one hand, the wife who
brought suit and intended to win usually alleged multi-causal charges
(adultery, violence, debauchery, dissipation of family funds), because
males were not normally convicted for sexual misdeeds alone. In the
unusual event that the wife won a separation for cause, she could le-
16 Robert-Joseph Pothier, Contrat du mariage in Ouvres de Pothier, ed. M. Bugnet (Paris,
1861); and Traer, Marriage and Family, chap. 1.

gaily withdraw her dowry (lineage property) from the corporate family
investment. On the other hand, the husband who brought suit often
alleged adultery and/or debauchery, because females convicted of sex-
ual misdeeds were punished severely. Preceding conviction, the hus-
band was empowered to negotiate with the wife interim detention
facilities and reconciliation. Following conviction, the husband ap-
propriated the wife's dowry (interest and principal), negotiated terms
of confinement, and paid her maintenance fees from the dowry funds.
Civil registries for vital statistics. The Family-State compact des-
ignated civil procedures for the registration of vital statistics-births,
marriages, and deaths. Noting that civil courts depended on proper
documentary evidence in the exercise of justice, the ordinance of 1579
required priests to turn over sworn copies of parish registers to the
clerks in civil registries every year. The edict of 1668 required priests to
keep two sets of detailed records of vital statistics and turn one over to
the civil clerks each year. Finally, the edicts of 1697 spelled out detailed
statistics to be entered in parish records, designated penalties (depriva-
tion of benefices, banishment) for priests who failed in that duty, and
engaged in a short-lived attempt (suppressed by the edict of 1702) to
place the publication of marriage banns under the jurisdiction of new
civil controleurs. Although the clergy remained the primary registrars
of vital statistics until the revolution in 1789, the records bearing the
information moved into civil registries, which became important de-
pots for documentary evidence.
Legal procedures for appeal. The Family-State compact desig-
nated legal appeal procedures to transfer disputed cases from lower
civil courts and from ecclesiastical courts to the Parlement of Paris.
First, the edicts of 1536 and 1539 allowed civil cases incurring severe
sentences (corporal punishment, banishment, death, and so forth) to
be appealed directly to the Parlement of Paris. Presumably that rule
applied from 1556 to cases of clandestine pregnancy and from 1579 to
cases of clandestine marriage and rapt. Second, cases for marital sepa-
ration were decided by civil judges following reports from husbands
(where applicable) on the success or failure of reconciliation; and the
precedents set by their judicial arrets befit the tenets of the compact.
Third, cases on marriage validity could be appealed from lower courts
to the Parlement of Paris, or could be transferred from ecclesiastical
courts to Parlement through an appeal procedure, appel comme
d'abus, already in place.'7 The jurisdictional contest between church
17 Ibid.

and civil courts may have had a philosophical side, but the real issue
rested on a point of law. Canon law did not require parental consent
for a valid marriage; French law did after 1556.18Judging from the
exhortations in the edicts of 1579, 1580, 1606, and 1629, ecclesiastical
courts tended to ignore the marriage pact. But following the ordinance
of 1579, which linked clandestine marriage with the capital crime of
rapt, disputed marriage cases were automatically directed to the
Parlement of Paris because ecclesiastical courts could not impose the
death penalty.'9 This procedural device aside, the jurists consistently
held that marriage was primarily a secular contract, not a religious
one, because it involved legal transfers of lineage property that were
subject to the civil jurisdiction of Parlement.20
The Family-State compact outlined a family model of socioeco-
nomic authority under patriarchal hegemony. First, the compact
placed decisions on the validity of clandestine marriages under French
law and civil courts by legalizing the principle of parental (that is,
paternal) consent, by closing avenues for evasion, and by penalizing
nonconformists. Second, the compact regulated reproductive customs
by supervising publicly the female realm of pregnancy and childbirth.
Third, the compact empowered husbands to regulate the conditions of
marital separation. Fourth, the compact closed loopholes in Parisian
inheritance customs to insure that property from the original marital
community descended only to the blood children of that marriage.
Moving from the Family-State compact set in place between 1530 and
1639, one must turn to the human agents who negotiated its terms
between 1587 and 1732.
The Counterfeit Culture

Once the individual cases taken in litigation before the Parlement of
Paris are reconstructed, they demonstrate how the Family-State com-
18 The Catholic church weakened its case for jurisdiction at the Council of Trent in the 1560s
when the bishops, who were pressured by the French to require parental consent for a valid
marriage, refused to include the stipulation in Tridentine reforms: see Hubert Jedin, Crisis and
Closure at the Council of Trent (London, 1967).
19The Parlement of Paris rarely invoked the death penalty, preferring to levy fines or pro-
nounce sentences of banishment, but the inclusion of capital punishment sent cases to the civil
bailiwick.
20 The legal notion of marriage as a secular contract effecting property transfersand its neces-
sary regulation in the "public interest" figures early in legists such as Jean de Coras, Arrest
Memorable, 51, who views the property changing hands as "les biens [qui] sont estimez comme le
second sang, et la vie de l'homme;" Pierre Ayrault, De la puissance paternelle, . . . 2nd ed.
(Tours, 1593), who views children as family capital; Barnab6 Brisson, Arrest de la cour de Parle-
ment, and Georges Lojiet, Nouveau et dernier recuezi, who speak in terms of children and prop-
erty as familial resources.

pact attempted to direct the lives of individuals, particularly women in

these instances, and how the human agents seemingly subject to such
direction fashioned a counterfeit culture by observing, appropriating,
or subverting law and custom to fit themselves.
The Houlbronne-Pallier, Brochard-Guy, Brion-Gaudart,
Brun-Saulx de Tavannes cases. As discussed in an earlier study of the
cases brought before the Parlement of Paris under the marriage pact,
the penalties exacted fell unevenly upon men and women. The Houl-
bronne-Pallier case of 1587 shows how custom and law collided. The
Parisian widow, Elisabeth Pallier, and the ecclesiastical court (follow-
ing Canon law favoring couple consent) considered her marriage to
Pierre Houlbronne valid, because it followed eight years of cohabita-
tion freely chosen, the birth of children, and a belated church wedding.
But Pierre Houlbronne (a minor), newly employed in the Palais de
Justice courts, his parents, and the Parlement of Paris (following
French law requiring parental consent) pronounced the marriage in-
valid, because it lacked parental consent. The marriage thus nullified
for rapt left Elisabeth the unwed mother of illegitimate children and
allowed Pierre to marry under parental direction into a better eco-
nomic alliance. In 1619 Jean Brochard (a royal councillor) sued his son
Cesar (a lawyer in Parlement) and Susanne Guy (a woman of lower
status) when they married secretly, and Parlement ruled the marriage
invalid. Cesar went to the monastery of Saint Victor for some months;
Susanne was convicted of rapt and banished from Paris for a decade. In
1636 Charles de Brion (seigneur de Hautefontaine) sued Jacques Gau-
dart (a legist in Parlement) for rapt after Gaudart consented to the mar-
riage of his daughter, Louise, and Brion's son, Marc (a colle'ge student).
Parlement found for Brion, nullified the marriage, and fined Gaudart
(46,000 livres). Marc went briefly to the monastery of Saint Victor;
Louise sustained the loss of honor (through the broken marriage) and
dowry monies (through the large fine). In 1732 Ferdinande-Henriette-
Gabrielle de Brun and Louis-Henri de Saulx de Tavannes attempted
to marry secretly. Ferdinande's father, Agathange-Ferdinand de Brun
(marquis de Roches), obtained a lettre de cachet to imprison Ferdi-
nande, first in the convent of Saint Elisabeth, then in the austere con-
vent of Saint Pelagie. The marquise de Roches, her supportive mother,
rented an apartment for both women at the convent of La Dame de la
Croix, but the angry marquis transferred Ferdinande to the dreaded
convent of La Madeleine, which housed under severe rule women con-
victed of sexual misconduct. Ferdinande lived in convents for fourteen
years, ten of them at La Madeleine, where she took simple (not final)

vows and served as superior of the house. When the marquis died in
1746, Ferdinande left the convent and reentered civil life severely disad-
vantaged by paternal disinheritance.2'
The A beille-Renard case. Around 1675 Edme Renard, a Parisian
wigmaker, hired Scipion Abeille as a shop helper. Renard soon fired
the young Abeille, who spent too much time writing satirical verses for
travelling troupes of actors. After a stint in the army Abeille returned to
Paris in 1680, some the worse for wear, and sought Renard's help to
negotiate an apprenticeship with a master surgeon who also had two
marriageable daughters. Renard lent him money to dress properly and
arranged the successful interviews. In 1684 and 1685 Abeille, now an
apprentice surgeon married to his master's daughter, borrowed money
from Renard again. Two years later in 1687 Renard's wife, who was
around five months pregnant and afflicted with a liver disease, died in
the presence of her husband, Abeille and his wife, and a master surgeon
named Rasigot, a friend of Renard. At the instant that Renard's wife
died, those present (it was alleged) believed they could remove the liv-
ing infant from the womb and administer the sacrament of baptism. In
the absence of Rasigot's apprentice, Abeille made the incision and
withdrew the child from the body of the dead woman. The infant sur-
vived (it was alleged) for fifteen minutes. Several days later Abeille
asked Renard for another loan. When Renard refused, Abeille insinu-
ated that the operation he had performed on Renard's wife saved her
dowry for Renard. Three years later in 1690 Renard won a suit against
Abeille (now a master surgeon) for the debts and took possession of
Abeille's personal goods for repayment. In the heat of the court actions,
pamphlets containing allegorical fables, such as L'A bel Heet le Renard
(The Bee and the Fox), appeared all over Paris. Renard charged that
Abeille had written the fables and hired co lporteurs and city sergents to
distribute and post thousands of copies in public places and on church
doors, including the door of the Peres de L'Oratoire church on the
21 See Hanley, "Family and State," for discussion of the "marriage pact" and these cases:
Houlbronne-Pallier case: Brisson, Arrest de la Cour de Parlement, . BN, F.27495, 1-82.

Brochard-Guy case: Registre criminel du Parlement de Paris (29 juillet 1619), AN, X2b.313.
Brion-Gaudart case: Arret de Parlement du 4 septembre 1637, BN, Collection Morel de Thoisy
189, fols. 234r-249v. Brun-Saulx de Tavannes case: A Nosseigneurs du Parlement, . . . BN,
Fol. Fm 2476, 1-21; Observations sommaires sur le crime de rapt, . . . BN, 40 Fm 30800, 1-7;
Memoire signifie pour dame Jeanne-Marie de Brun, . . . BN, Fol. Fm 11377, 1-28; Memoire
pour dlle. Ferdinande-Henriette-Gabrielle deBrun, . . BN, 40 Fm 35937, 1-132; Memoire pour
le comte et la comtesse de la Riviere, . . BN, 40 Fm 35938, 1-52; Observations signifiees, sur la
memoire de la dule. de Brun, BN, 40 Fm 35940, 1-6; Lettre de M. . . . P. . . . a M. le chevalier
de C., BN, 40 Fm 23642, 1-14; Nouvelle addition au memoire signifie, pour le cte. du
Montal, . BN, 40 Fm 11014, 1-19.

corner where Renard lived. Abeille reaped rounds of public applause

and laughter from readers and tellers of these fables, but Renard
charged that the fables damaged his reputation and forced him to de-
fend his honor in the public "theatre" of Paris.22
The Perreau-Semitte case. In 1683 a merchant, Louis Semitte,
and the daughter of a merchant, Marie-Gabrielle Perreau, married. He
brought to the union a business; she brought a dowry (4,000 livres)
soon invested in the business. Aided by an investment loan from a
banker friend, Nicolas Goy, who visited them regularly, Louis and
Marie turned a tidy profit from the brandy trade, and Louis purchased
a minor royal office. In the wake of stormy relations almost nine years
later and before Marie could launch her suit for separation, Louis
charged her with adultery and named the banker as her accomplice.
Marie was convicted of adultery but appealed the case alleging new
evidence-a letter written by Louis four years earlier countenancing
her amorous relations outside the marriage. Faced with evidence that
suggested he approved the exchange of his wife's favors for the banker's
capital, Louis forestalled Marie's appeal by undertaking a reconcilia-
tion. They met over a two-month period at the house of an interme-
diary and carried out a public ritual of reconciliation, sharing meals
and exchanging kisses before witnesses.
The reconciliation in progress, Marie agreed to drop her appeal
and voluntarily retire to the convent of Saint Benoit, a comfortable and
reputable house, where she would spend six months as a penitent
dressed in secular clothes. Louis would send her personal effects to the
convent, pay her maintenance fee there, and invite her back to the
household at the end of that time. During the first three months of
convent confinement Louis visited regularly-across the grille, not in
physical proximity and before witnesses, including the mother su-
perior. As the six months waned, however, so did Louis' visits. The
troubled Marie realized that she had compromised her case by drop-
ping the appeal. Following nine months of confinement, Louis
abruptly transferredMarie to the Conciergerie to await formal sentenc-
ing for adultery. There he paid for a private furnished cell and visited
Marie regularly-with no grille marking the physical space between
them.
22 Abeille-Renard case:Extrait des registres deParlement, BN, Fol. Fm 11, 1;MWmoirepour
servir d'instruction en l'affaire du sieur Edme Renard, . . . BN, Fol. Fm 14190, 1-6; Factum
pour Scipion A beille, . . . BN, Thoisy 102, fols. 157r- 1 64v (pp. 1-12). The other fables were Le
Rossignol et le Renard and le Singe a l'Abeille et au Renard. Although Renard insisted that six
thousand copies were distributed, the number was more likely in the hundreds.

Louis did not request final sentencing immediately but took ad-
vantage of visiting privileges. When Marie became pregnant, he re-
moved her from the Conciergerie to the convent of Notre Dame de
Liesse, a less comfortable and less reputable convent, where he bribed
the mother superior. Marie was allowed private visits with guests in the
parlor but forbidden visits from a midwife (lest the pregnancy be ter-
minated). Louis did not visit. When Marie gave birth to Catherine-
Louise, Louis disavowed the child and placed her in the orphanage of
the Enfants-Trouves. Alleging Marie's repeated adultery (purportedly
in the convent parlors) evidenced by pregnancy and birth, he called for
the final rendition of the adultery sentence. The superior of Notre
Dame supported the charge; some of the inmates there denied it. The
adultery conviction stood, and Marie had to negotiate with Louis, who
threatened to install her in the odious maison de force of La Salpetriere,
for residence in a decent convent paid for by her dowry interest. All the
while, this scandalous story was hawked all over the streets of Paris in
the satirical sonnets written by Eustache Le Noble, baron de Saint-
Georges, who had met Marie while imprisoned in the Conciergerie for
debts.23
The Bruix-La Ferte-Senneterre case. In 1698 the marquise Fran-
poise-Charlotte de La Ferte-Senneterre, whose family had high hopes
of reviving their dwindling fortunes, married Gabriel Thibault de la
Carte and gave birth to a son in 1699. During the next few years Fran-
poise and Gabriel, together or in consort with other family members,
devised a plan to hold family assets undivided. When Fran-oise became
pregnant again in 1707, they kept the pregnancy secret and bribed the
critical confidants: chambermaid, wet-nurse, and midwife. Francoise
was assisted by the midwife at delivery and gave birth to a daughter,
Marie. The midwife arranged for the baptism of the newborn, recorded
fictitious parents, and placed the infant with a foster family. Francoise
and Gabriel supported Marie (even after Gabriel died in 1712) until the
girl married. Not at any time, however, did any of the parties acknowl-
edge Marie's origins. Some twenty-five years later the foster family,
either from conscience or for gain, revealed the secret. Marie de Bruix
sought legal remedy in court and charged Francoise (now a widow)
23 Perreau-Semitte case: A Nosseigneurs de Parlement, . . . BN, 40 Fm 29939, 1-45; Fac-

tum; ou requeste de Louis Semite, . . . 4?Fm29940, 1-16; Requeste de Louis Semite, . . . BN,
40 Fm 29941, 1-14; Reponse servant de Factum, pour Damoiselle Marie Gabrielle Perreau, appel-
lante, . . . BN, 40 Fm 25570, 1-8; A Nosseigneurs de Parlement, . . .BN, 40 Fm 25572, 1-22;
MWmoirepour Mademoiselle Semite, BN, 80 Fm 2758, 1-42; Factum pour messire Eustache
Le Noble, chevalier, baron de Saint Georges, . . . BN, Thoisy 96, fols. 27r-31v (pp. 1-10).

with suppression d'etat (suppressing the civil status of a person) to

advantage her son and heir to the duchy. The La Ferte-Senneterre fam-
ily countered the charge. They had been kind to a foundling, Marie,
but her claim to kinship was one of an imposter.24
The Digard-du Piquet case. In 1729 Barbe-Francoise Digard des
Meulettes gave birth to a son almost nine months after the death of
her husband, Claude-Ferdinand du Piquet, seigneur de Foucheran.
Straightaway the du Piquet family charged that Barbe had shammed a
pregnancy following her husband's untimely death, and they sued on
the charge of supposition d'enfant (pretending another child is one's
own). Apparently, Barbe had determined that upon Claude's death she
would not accept the status of a childless widow, because she took the
crucial steps necessary to simulate a pregnancy and stage a birth. First,
Barbe bribed a midwife to oversee the fictitious birth and register it.
Second, they contacted a prostitute, who arranged for the purchase
eight months later from a poor woman at the Hotel Dieu hospital of a
newborn child and the birthing paraphernalia (the bloody sheets, the
afterbirth, and so forth). Third, Barbe sent the pregnant woman to
make the declaration de la grossesse required of pregnant widows and
register the pregnancy at the Hotel de Ville under Barbe's name. Fi-
nally, the midwife attended the real birth at the Hotel Dieu hospital,
rushed the newborn baby and the birth paraphernalia to Barbe; and
they staged a birth, followed up with witnesses and certification of
birth and baptism. In the case against Barbe, the du Piquet family
likened the enormity of her act to the imposture of "Arnauld Duthil"
(Arnaud du Tilh, the false Martin Guerre) more than a century before.25
These cases taken before the Parlement of Paris record the human
dramas that were played and replayed, first in the courtrooms, then on
the streets of Paris, when litigants published their stories in pamphlets
and hawked them through colporteurs and printers, turning legal
24 Bruix-La Ferte-Senneterre case: Memoire pour dame Marie de La Ferte'-Senneterre,et

Bernard de Bruix, . . BN, Fol. Fm 2466, 1-55; Memoire pour dame Marie de La Ferte-
Senneterre, . . . BN, Fol. Fm 2467, 1-29; Preis pour les sieur et dame de Boudeville, . . . BN,
Fol. Fm 1924, 1-11; Interrogatoire subi par mme. la marquise de Boudeville, . . . BN, Fol. Fm
1925, 1-8; Memoire signifie pour dule. Charlotte de La Carte de la Ferte-Senneterre, . . . BN,
Fol. Fm 8111, 1-50; Memoire pour messire Jean-Francois de Malortye, marquis de Boude-
ville, . . . BN, Fol. Fm 10468, 1-32; Second memoire pour la dlle. de La Ferte; intimee, . . BN,
Fol. Fm 8112, 1-22; Memoire pour le marquis de La Ferte, . . . BN, Fol. Fm 8115, 1-32.
25 Digard-du Piquet case: Memoire signifie pour Dame Barbe-Fran oise d'Igard des Meu-
lettes, . . BN, Fol. Fm 5416, 1-24; Memoire pour Dame Marie de Plaine, . . BN, Fol.
Fm 5425, 1-11, which mentions Arnaud du Tilh, the false Martin Guerre (see Davis, In. above);
MemoiresignifiepourMarieHerve, . . BN, Fol. Fm 6522, 1-7; A Nosseigneurs deParlement,
. . .BN, Fol. Fm 6523, 1-4.

procedures into street dramas that informed and inflamed public

opinion.26
The Engendered State

Embedded in the relations of "the practice of the structure" (here, the
rules of the Family-State compact) and "the structure of the practice"
(here, the actions of the human agents), lay the dynamics of historical
process.27The Family-State compact, replete with legalized gender dis-
tinctions, widened the gap in social entitlement by empowering male
heads and placing females at risk. At the same time, the women in these
particular cases fashioned a counterfeit culture both to suit themselves
and to minimize the risks. Finally, when brought to litigation, many
adversaries took their cases to the streets, provoking discourse on the
vagaries of social entitlement that put the system itself at issue.
When the Family-State compact empowered family heads to con-
trol marriage and family formation, the corporate household economy
benefited. This proto-capitalistic format placed a premium on the ac-
quisition of two kinds of capital: financial capital (lands, offices,
monies) required to construct and expand family alliances; and sym-
bolic capital (honor, reputation, social status) required to maintain
place in the patronage system. It was the mesalliance of this capital,
financial and honorific, that family heads abhorred. Yet judging by the
crescendo of complaints from the 1630s about noncompliant enfants
de famille and dockets crowded with rapt cases,28 the marriage pact
was difficult to monitor. The cases of Houlbronne-Pallier, Broch-
ard-Guy, Brion-Gaudart, and Brun-Saulx de Tavannes indicate
why the edicts of 1629, 1639, and 1697 complained about repeated vio-
lations of the edicts of 1556 and 1579. The edict of 1697 listed the vexing
26 On the manner in which the private may be rendered public through drama, see Victor
Turner, Drama, Fields, Metaphors: Symbolic Action in Human Society (Ithaca, 1974); and for
one example of the repeated evocation of city space as a public stage, the "theatre of Paris," see the
Abeille-Renard case, 22n. above.
27 For a theoretical exposition of "the relations of practice," involving not individuals but
cultural categories and the relationships they imply, see Marshall Sahlins, Historical Metaphors
and Mythical Realities: Structure in the Early History of the Sandwich Islands Kingdom (ASAO,
No. 1, Ann Arbor, 1981); and his Islands of History, Introduction and chap. 5. Along with Philip
Abrams, Historical Sociology (Ithaca, 1982), and Anthony Giddens, Profiles and Critiques in
Social Theory (Berkeley, 1982), Sahlins, Bourdieu, and Hanley (3n. above) attempt to reunite
Fernand Braudel's problematic separation of structure and event in the historical process.
28 See Hanley, "Family and State," for the stricter attitudes of the legists, Jerome Bignon and
Pierre Seguier, noted in Lettre de M. Seguier . . . a M. Bignon . . . a travailler a une ordon-
nance sur les mariages clandestins . . avec la reponse . . . 1633, . . . BN, Thoisy 418, fols.
242r-254v.

problems: the contraction of ruinous unions that tarnished family hon-

or, the refusal to consider inequality of birth as an impediment, the
corruption of contemporary mores, the inability of laws to arrest the
force of human passion, the sordid interests that allowed witnesses to
take bribes and priests to violate their offices in word and deed. At the
same time, however, the socioeconomic system outlined by the Family-
State compact underwrote the social survival of the officeholders and
the bureaus of state right into the eighteenth century. As a result, the
combined efforts of officeholders and the government to control family
formation escalated, leading to stricter practices such as the lettre de
cachet that allowed family heads policing powers in the manner of the
marquis de Brun and Louis Semitte.29
When the Family-State compact touched reproductive norms, it
reached into the most intimate female realm of pregnancy and child-
birth, which was much less amenable to regulation than some fields of
human endeavor. Although the compact assumed that women who
flouted pregnancy rules acted out of "false honor," it is patently ob-
vious that most women knew where honor lay. Although the edicts
against clandestine pregnancy seemed to address directly the acts of
abortion and infanticide, in fact they also addressed other illegal acts
which were more problematic for being connected with the disposition
of lineage property. In case after case legists issues arrets that declared
illegal the acts of supposition d'enfant (to attribute to a woman a child
who is the child of another), suppression d'enfant (to effect the disap-
pearance of a child), and suppression d'etat (to suppress proof of the
civil status of a person).
The urgent intention to regulate reproduction is trumpeted by the
rhetoric of the edicts and the designation of priests and city officials as
overseers of unmarried pregnant women. To the contrary, however,
the real mediators between the reproductive agents and the compact
were midwives, who were present (or supposedly present) at births and
often registered them. As legal penalties widened the poles of male-
female biological surety and risk, women minimized risk by forming
associations with midwives, who served in legal and illegal capacities.
There were always underground midwives for hire, and that cadre in-
creased when Protestant midwives were forbidden to practice in 1680.
Midwives frequented convents, as Louis Semitte knew when he denied
Marie Perreau access to one there. The midwife carried out the elabo-
29 On the use of the lettre de cachet in the eighteenth century, see Arlette Farge and Michel
Foucault, Le DWsordredes Familles (Paris, 1982).

rate negotiations (registering the birth, naming fictitious parents,

finding foster parents) that enabled Fran~oise de La Ferte-Senneterre
and Gabriel Thibault to hide the birth of a daughter but not abandon
her. The essential machinations of the midwife allowed the widow
Barbe Digard to simulate a pregnancy, register the declaration de la
grossesse, and stage a birth. In this system of reproduction, where
blood dictated proper progeny, adoption was not an alternative, and
clandestine pregnancy incurred penalty, newborns (legally or illegally
conceived) were important pawns. Often placed in opposition, the
compact's reproductive rules and the female sense of honor invited dis-
guise and imposture. The resulting collaboration of women-lower
class, bourgeoise, and noble; pregnant, non-pregnant, and midwives-
disavowed status, law, and nature to create a common field of endeavor
based on gender which confounded the official bonds of a society of
orders.
When the Family-State compact amended the inheritance system,
it fostered distinct patterns of inheritance in France. European inheri-
tance patterns varied in accordance with family life stages: union
(when a couple married and combined assets in a household), birth
(when children were born), fission (when children married and took
assets out), and death (when the original couple died and their estate
was distributed).30 But the French family life cycle adhered to a two-
stage format. The compact fused the first and second stages, union and
birth, because in principle the union established the new household,
but in practice the household remained tenuous until the birth of legit-
imate children secured the original family investments. And the com-
pact linked the third and fourth stages, fission and death, because al-
though parents controlled the connubial fate of their children through
the marriage pact, later on those middle-aged children could turn the
legal tables on aging parents and limit the terms of parental remarriage
(in extremis) and possible reproduction. As the main agents of repro-
duction, women attained honor not only by reproductive success itself
but also by securing the family capital incorporated in the new house-
hold under construction. In this milieu one can situate the actions of
Francoise de La Ferte-Senneterre and Gabriel Thibault, parents of a
son, who masked the birth of a daughter (suppression d'etat) to keep
the inheritance undivided; and the fright of Edme Renard when the
apprentice surgeon, Scipion Abeille, insinuated that his withdrawal of
30 David Warren Sabean, "Aspects of Kinship Behavior and Property in Rural Western Eu-
rope before 1800," in Family and Inheritance, chap. 4.

a live child from the body of Renard's dead wife (if untrue, a case of
supposition d'enfant) saved her dowry for the husband; and Barbe
Digard's simulation of a birth (supposition d'enfant) nine months fol-
lowing Claude du Piquet's death. The du Piquet's equation of the
enormity of Barbe's crime with the crime of Arnaud du Tilh (the false
Martin Guerre), linked Barbe (the false mother) with Arnaud (the false
husband) as imposters who insinuated themselves and children into du
Piquet and Guerre lineage property.
When the Family-State compact formed corporate households by
welding female and male capital from blood lines, it foreclosed marital
separation. At almost any cost, judges tried to maintain marital
unions. Spouses might be torn asunder, but the division of capital that
occurred if a wife legally withdrew her dowry spelled disaster for the
household. Time and again, therefore, husbands who suspected wives
of contemplating separation suits stalled such moves by initiating
charges of adultery, fabricated or not. The practice set forth by prece-
dents from judicial arretsactually empowered husbands (not judges) to
render verdicts, because husbands negotiated reconciliation and con-
finement. Over a two-year probationary period a husband could visit a
detained wife and decide whether to invite her back into the household,
legally waiving the pending adultery charge, or to proceed with the
final sentencing and arrange confinement quarters. But the reconcilia-
tion rituals themselves, which favored male access, often sexual, to
women already on the docket for sexual misconduct, were dangerous.
At first Marie Perreau protected herself by employing a public ritual of
reconciliation and choosing a convent that placed Louis' visits on the
opposite side of the grille. Once moved to the Conciergerie prison, that
protection ceased. Yet few women placed in this liminal pose between
detention and freedom, could afford to withhold favors: first, because
reconciliation failure incurred the loss of freedom, financial assets, and
children; and second, because the type of convent negotiated dictated
the quality of life lived out. The rules governing marital separation too
often threatened women with a kind of civil death born of market solu-
tions within the household.
When the Family-State compact moved marriage cases from eccle-
siastical courts to Parlements and shifted sexual misdeeds from moral
to civil arenas, the sexual became socially charged. The gender-specific
consequences of sexual misconduct are instructive. For the males who
filled quasi-public, quasi-familial offices, sexual misdeeds remained
private matters that did not irreparably dishonor families; and male
detention was almost always short term. But for the females who re-

produced the family itself over time by securing through progeny the
new households under construction (as well as the offices attached to
them), sexual misdeeds were treated as public misdemeanors that dis-
honored families; and female incarceration could be quite long-ten
years, fifteen years, life. Here it would appear that women executed the
civil task which touched the public interest-the reproduction of fami-
lies over generations-and that female conduct, seemingly private and
familial, actually was defined as public conduct that warranted prose-
cution if faulty. Therein lay the dilemma. These encounters created a
marginal caste of delinquents who resided in the bosom of reputable
families. Unwilling to resort to public prisons, most families sought
alternative detention centers. Some monasteries, such as Saint Victor,
boarded errant men like Cesar Brochard and Marc de Brion. But an
array of convents and quasi-convents detained or imprisoned errant
women. Susanne Guy and Louise Gaudart, both dishonored, more
than likely sought living space in a convent. Ferdinande de Brun and
Marie Perreau spent years in reputable and disreputable convents, and
the marquise de Roches sought retirement in one. To be sure, some
congregations of nuns during the Catholic reformation reoriented
convents away from contemplative orders and toward nursing, teach-
ing, and social work, thereby creating the only careers available for
women outside of marriage.3' Yet surely the impetus for this change of
direction came in part from the involuntary presence of the new clien-
tele such as Ferdinande de Brun, who made the best of a very bad bar-
gain wrought by the compact. There were socioeconomic reasons, as
well as religious ones, for the appearance and reorientation of convents
and quasi-convents during the later seventeenth century: first, the need
of families to mobilize convents as alternative prisons; and second, the
need of some convents to increase income with boarding fees, gifts, and
bribes. Convents ranked high among the associations that laywomen
prudently formed, because they provided the only habitable female
space outside the household-quarters for retirement, refuge, and de-
tention. This use of convent space may be viewed with some ambiva-
lence: although women under sentence surely preferred detention in
convents to that in civil prisons, the availability of convents as deten-
tion centers also legitimized both the compact and the gender distinc-
tions it articulated.
When the Family-State compact and the counterfeit culture col-
31 See Olwen Huf ton and Frank Tallett, "Communities of Women, the Religious Life, and
Public Service in Eighteenth-Century France," in Connecting Spheres, chap. 3.

lided, some litigants took cases from the courtrooms to the streets, stak-
ing out the common grounds of a political culture that cut across
gender lines and the society of orders. The multi-vocal discourses thus
provoked moved in concentric circles around judges and litigants,
litigants and the public, the public and judges, and focused on social
entitlement. The discussants read the factums, memoires, and other
pamphlets; retold both sides of the stories; and argued about the merits
of cases. The circulation of Scipion Abeille's fables gives some sense of
the dimensions of this discourse. Deliberately written to evoke a range
of public passions, the leaflets were sold and posted in particular quar-
ters of Paris, including the wall of Renard's neighborhood church. In
this "theatre" of Paris, where women enjoyed full access as both play-
ers and spectators, reputations were attacked and defended, customs
and mores created and undone, and the rules of the game scrutinized.
The decision of Renard, his surgeon friend, and the apprentice Abeille
to withdraw a supposedly living child from a dead woman raised diffi-
cult questions about medical ethics and inheritance laws. Marie Per-
reau lost her adultery case but bid aggressively for public opinion
through the pen of Eustache Deschamps, who spread the story all over
Paris, alerted other women to the hidden dangers of adultery charges,
and caricatured Louis Semitte as a Molierean merchant fool. Once ex-
posed to the public, the mediatorship of the midwives for Charlotte de
La Ferte-Senneterre and Barbe Digard actually advertised the range of
services available from midwives and may have contributed to official
suspicion of them. Beneath the surface, the street talk, taken by some as
idle gossip, actually fomented social discourse linked to local knowl-
edge. Over time this discourse on social entitlement provided discus-
sants with a rudimentary education in law and history, as is evident in
the du Piquet's reference to "the return of Martin Guerre," and put the
system itself on trial by debating the merits of the family model of
authority and, later on, its political analogue, the state model, right up
to the Revolution.
Debated or not, the Family-State compact provided a formidable
family model of socioeconomic authority which influenced the state
model of political power in the making at the same time. French polit-
ical theorists and legists complemented abstract medieval organologi-
cal and corporate analogies for the body politic with marriage and
family metaphors that explained the king's limited constitutional rela-
tionship to the kingdom: "The king is the husband and political
spouse of the chose publique, which brings to him at his coronation
the domain as the dowry of his crown; and the royal children [males in

the reference] are children of the French people and of the chose pub-
lique."32 Not in the least abstract, the family model of authority that
infused such metaphors already required "patrimonic" behavior, or
loyalty to family and patrimony, by law. As a political analogue, more-
over, the family metaphor did not fail the monarchic state as early as
did other representations, such as divine right, which could not survive
the desacralization of kingship after 1610; or the beehive, whose king
when subjected to scientific scrutiny turned out to be a queen.33 The
family model depended on gender distinctions to support the socio-
economic burdens of family formation and officeholding necessary for
monarchic state building; and the sheer magnitude of the social sub-
scription of women (wittingly or unwittingly) to that system casts
women as prime participants, never merely spectators, in early modern
state building. Paradoxically, while female subscription helped to
construct a male model of political authority, female counterfeiting
also questioned its legitimacy. In this view of the phenomena of family
formation and state building in early modern France, the state did not
"emerge" as some kind of political outgrowth of western political
thought or institutions waxing representative.34The state was "en-
gendered," or formed, by the Family-State compact and its attendant
family model of authority that eventually defined for the modern era a
state model of political power wedded to male authority.
32 For marriage and family metaphors used to articulate the concept of the state, see Hanley,
The Lit de Justice, chaps, 2, 3, 5, 7, and 9.
33 Ibid., chaps. 7, 10 and 11 for the way in which the Lit de Justice assembly displaced the
coronation in theory by 1563, in practice by 1610;and also consult Jeffrey Merrick, The Desacrali-
zation of the French Monarchy (Baton Rouge, 1989), and "Royal Bees: The Gender Politics of the
Beehive in Early Modern Europe," Studies in Eighteenth-Century Culture, ed. J. Yolton, 18
(1988): 7-37.
34 To the contrary, the fates of seemingly institutionalized national forums, such as the
Estates General and the Lit de Justice assembly, were exceedingly erratic up to the eve of the
Revolution; Hanley, The Lit de Justice, chap. 14.


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Society for French Historical Studies

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In the secret backshop of the mind recommended by Montaigne, histo-

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cess of reordering as one that "counterfeits culture"; that is, as a process

The Family-State Compact

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These professional legists purchased judicial offices with family

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as a supreme court for that body and arrested encroachments from

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heritance rules, and marital separation arrangements) and instituted

9 The "Family-State compact" is drawn from the following legislation: Francois-Andre

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manded exact observance of the ordinance of 1579 and ordered cases

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tance to the legitime portion of an estate (formerly guaranteed), and it

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On a different note, the government offered social rewards for

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as partners, but the lineage property (propres) remained linked to the

16 Robert-Joseph Pothier, Contrat du mariage in Ouvres de Pothier, ed. M. Bugnet (Paris,

1861); and Traer, Marriage and Family, chap. 1.

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The Counterfeit Culture

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pact attempted to direct the lives of individuals, particularly women in

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Houlbronne-Pallier case: Brisson, Arrest de la Cour de Parlement, . BN, F.27495, 1-82.

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corner where Renard lived. Abeille reaped rounds of public applause

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23 Perreau-Semitte case: A Nosseigneurs de Parlement, . . . BN, 40 Fm 29939, 1-45; Fac-

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with suppression d'etat (suppressing the civil status of a person) to

24 Bruix-La Ferte-Senneterre case: Memoire pour dame Marie de La Ferte'-Senneterre,et

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procedures into street dramas that informed and inflamed public

The Engendered State

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problems: the contraction of ruinous unions that tarnished family hon-

Foucault, Le DWsordredes Familles (Paris, 1982).

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rate negotiations (registering the birth, naming fictitious parents,

rope before 1800," in Family and Inheritance, chap. 4.

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